‘If you lose it, we’re one down on our posse. Do you understand me?’ Opening her bag, Susan P took out a small vial of powder and quickly cut a few lines on the coffee table. ‘Snort that, it’s Charlie. I know you don’t normally touch it but it’ll give you an edge, and you need that tonight.’
Cathy did as she was told, taking the small straw from her friend and snorting up the cocaine quickly.
‘Now I have been in touch with every contact I have, and I can guarantee you we will have a lead before the night’s over. What we need is a small clue as to where he would take her. Once we have that, we’re on our way.’
Susan was talking for effect and she knew it. Unless someone told them where she was they had no chance of finding the girl, no chance whatsoever.
Given the fact that Campbell had been using and abusing for years without suffering so much as a fine for living off immoral earnings, it seemed foolish to hope he would make a mistake this time. But where there was life there was hope, as the saying went, and Susan P knew she had to keep up Cathy’s spirits.
Michaela was sitting in Campbell’s car. Terry was giving him a fixed-rate reward: in criminal parlance that meant the sum paid over had already been negotiated and earned.
Michaela didn’t count it, he knew it would all be there. Slipping the two thousand into his handbag, he said, ‘You won’t hurt her, will you, Terry? She’s a good kid, you know, and I only did this as a favour to you.’
Terry laughed coarsely. ‘What I do with her is my business, OK? I kept my end of the bargain, and you kept yours. The girl’s my property now, nothing to do with you at all. Keep your nose and your mouth out of my business and we’ll be fine. Interfere and I’ll take your fucking head off your shoulders, wig and all. Dig?’
But Michaela wasn’t satisfied. ‘I delivered her on the proviso you did not hurt her. Listen to me, Terry. That little girl is a sweetie, she’s a good kid, and her mother will move heaven and earth to find her, as will Richard Gates and Susan P. Now you promised me you was just going to use her as a bit of leverage, no more and no less.’
Terry Campbell smiled, displaying even white teeth, and then he said roughly: ‘I lied.’
Michaela paled underneath his Mary Quant panstick. ‘You bastard! You know I’d never have done anything if I’d thought you’d hurt her. What’s brought about this change then?’
‘Her mother actually went into my home - my fucking home! - where my children live. She also went to my mother’s house and threatened her. Threatened
my mother
.’ Campbell took a deep breath. ‘No one fucks with my family and gets away with it. This is personal. That fucking bitch needs a lesson and I’m going to see that she gets one.’
Then Terry opened the car door and pushed him out roughly. ‘Fuck off, bitch! I’ve got what I wanted and you supplied it to me. Now leave me alone and keep your mouth shut.’
Michaela knew when to retreat and did so. As he watched the car pull away he thought that two grand wasn’t enough for what he’d just done. He should have asked for five. Flagging down a black cab, he made his way to Eddie Durrant’s flat in Bayswater.
He had really burned his boats now. He couldn’t go back to his house, the club - anywhere. Cathy would know who had taken her daughter from school, would know Michaela had tucked her up. If anything happened to Kitty, he was a dead man.
But Michaela had always been a selfish, two-faced liar; it was in his nature. Two grand was two grand after all. He needed money to go to South America and get The Op, the surgical procedure that would change his life.
A girl had to look out for number one - especially when that girl was in fact a man.
Louis Bardell was twenty-eight. His smooth olive skin, deep green eyes and thick black hair made him strikingly attractive. He knew people looked at him and he enjoyed it. He was also a homosexual with a taste for the exotic: young boys.
As he and a pair of soulmates came out of his Kensington flat, Louis saw a large thuggish-looking bald man leaning against his dark blue Mercedes. Glancing at his friends, he pulled himself up to his full height and said loudly: ‘Get off my car, there’s a good chap, before I call the police.’
The man stood upright and Louis saw just how large he was. His two friends took a step back.
‘I
am
the police. Shall we go inside? I need to talk to you about something.’
‘I’m sorry but I’m on my way out for the evening . . .’ His voice trailed off as Richard Gates smiled threateningly down at him. ‘Inside, please, all of you.’
Back in the house Richard watched as Louis and his friends all seated themselves in the high-ceilinged drawing room.
‘Nice place.’
Louis snorted. ‘Take a good look, dearie, it’s the nearest you’ll ever get to real money.’
Richard said pleasantly, ‘If you don’t shut your fucking mouth, I’ll see to it that you’re banged up in Brixton for the next few days, helping me with enquiries - and that’s the nearest
you’ll
ever get to having your arse torn out!’
Louis and his friends all shuddered.
‘Pain is a horrible thing, isn’t it, lads?’ Gates went on. ‘I know I don’t like it, not personally, though I enjoy inflicting it on people. Funny that, isn’t it? I could take out a knife and cut off your ears and laugh me head off, but if you accidentally scratched me, I’d do me crust. You see, I hate pain, personal pain.’
Richard smiled at Louis.
‘And that’s something we have in common, isn’t it? Because you like hurting people, don’t you? You like hurting little boys and girls. I know that’s true because I have a video of you doing just that. You see, Trevale sold those videos he made of you in action. It wasn’t such a private party. You’re number one in the paedophile electric blue charts all over Europe. You’re famous, mate.’
Louis was now a sickly white. His whole demeanour had changed in a few seconds. Licking his lips, he shook his head in confusion. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Your big green eyes are striking, hard to mistake. I understand you also have a rather unusual tattoo on your right buttock: a snake chasing itself. Want to take down your trousers and prove me wrong? No, thought not. You’re looking at a long stretch, Sonny Jim,’ he concluded. ‘There ain’t enough money in the world to stop this prosecution taking place.’
‘You’d better be very careful what you say, Mr . . .’
Richard smiled. ‘Gates. Detective Inspector Richard Gates. Would you like me to tattoo the name on your other cheek, by any chance? In case you forget it?’ He turned to the other two men and smiled once more. It was one of his better smiles, a cross between a grimace and a death’s head. ‘You two gentlemen are quiet. What’s wrong, cat got your tongues?’
The two men, one a computer analyst and the other a professional footballer, stared at him in distress and fear.
‘What exactly are you after?’ This from the analyst.
‘I’m after the location of Terry Campbell’s little soiree, the one he’s having tonight. I heard through the grapevine he was having one of his private parties. Well, they would have to be private, wouldn’t they? I mean, it’s hardly the type of occasion you’d invite your mother or sister to, is it?’
The footballer, a twenty-five-year-old Frenchman, had the grace to look ashamed and instinctively Richard knew he had his man.
He looked at Richard and spoke softly. ‘No one knows the location until an hour before. That’s how it’s always worked in the past.’
‘OK,’ Richard decided, ‘we’re all going to sit here together and have a lovely little chat, a few Scotches, and when we know the location, I can get along there and fuck up the night’s entertainment.’ He rubbed his hands together in a parody of Uriah Heep and squealed in a girlish voice: ‘Boy, am I looking forward to that!’
Kitty was terrified. When she had seen Michaela at the school she had at first been concerned, fearing that her mother was ill. But Michaela had been quick to reassure her that her mother was in fact OK; Desrae was holding a private party and he wanted Kitty to be there. The story about Cathy’s being unwell was just for the school’s benefit.
It wasn’t until they had hit London and she had been taken to a strange house that she’d realised something was not right. Her first sight of Trevale Campbell had been terrifying. He just stared at her, then made her put her arms above her head and turn around slowly. All the time she did it he watched her critically.
Michaela was nowhere to be seen. When Kitty attempted to walk to the front door, the man took her roughly by the arm and slammed her into a chair so hard it jarred her spine. The girl realised she was in danger, but had no idea why this was happening. What could the man want with her?
Then he put on a video and told her to watch it, and learn.
It was only after she had seen the video that she understood just how much trouble she was in.
Trevale Campbell was loving every second of her distress.
This was pay back in a big way.
If that bitch’s mother thought she’d get away with desecrating his home then she had another think coming. And when he had sorted out the daughter, he was going to sort out the mother as well.
He was going to force her to watch the video of her daughter’s coming of age.
Eddie Durrant was very big, and handsome with the dark, almond-shaped eyes of his father and perfect coffee-coloured skin. A violent criminal, he hated his half-brother Trevale with a vengeance. Eddie’s mother had been a young white East End girl called Renee. She had given birth at sixteen, and his father had abandoned her though he always kept an eye on his son.
Like Trevale, Eddie was his father’s son.
He’d urged his boys to be hard, to be tough, to be the best. He’d forced them into violent confrontations as children, made them fight when they were together, making the victor his best boy for the day.
Eddie had always resented the fact that his father had lived with Trevale’s mother after discarding his own.
As he grew into adulthood he had the same kink in his nature as his half-brother. Both took kindness for weakness, and both respected strength, and strength alone. Both used and abused everyone and anyone. Both saw money as the only commodity, and violent sexual activity as something that was their right. It would never have occurred to them that feelings were involved. At least, the feelings of other people.
When Eddie had found out that his brother was making a small fortune with his sex films business, he had made it his own business to hop in and take a slice of the action. Not because he needed the money or because he wanted a new venture, but because it pleased him to put one over on Trevale. Michaela had come up trumps as Eddie had known he would.
Now, as he heard the latest development in the story, Eddie felt annoyed and elated all at the same time.
‘You’re telling me that my brother has taken the daughter of Cathy Pasquale and is going to use her at one of his parties tonight?’
Michaela nodded, worried about what he had done. Seeing Eddie had made him realise he had a foot in both camps and that could be a dangerous thing. A very dangerous thing. But he wanted to score a little more money before he made his departure for Rio.
Michaela put on his little-girl-lost face and said breathily: ‘I had to do what he asked, Eddie. I mean, if I’d refused to go and get her, he’d have hurt me bad, wouldn’t he?’
Eddie looked at the man-woman before him and felt disgust rise inside him. ‘That Pasquale woman has been good to you. Don’t you have any loyalty to anyone, Mickey?’
Michaela shrugged. ‘Of course I do, but I can’t fight Terry, you know that. Once you go back to South America, I’ll be left to fend for myself again. I can’t afford to have your brother as an enemy.’
Eddie laughed humourlessly. ‘But you can afford to have Cathy Pasquale as your enemy, is that it?’
Michaela was not at all pleased with the way the conversation was progressing. ‘Look, Eddie, I just did what I had to do, OK? I’m sorry, I liked the girl, I like Cathy . . . fuck me, I like them all but I have to watch my own arse. This could be an earner you know, for us both. If we tell Cathy we can get her daughter back she’ll pay well, I know she will.’
Eddie sat opposite him, resting his chin in one large cupped hand. ‘You don’t say?’
Warming to his theme, Michaela nodded furiously. ‘At least ten grand, maybe more.’
Eddie waved his hand dismissively. ‘You are willing to sell the life of a young girl, the daughter of a woman who was very good to you. Who loaned you money for your breast op, who gave you a job when you needed one, who has taken you into her club and by the sound of it, her family. I just want to get this straight in my own mind, see. I want to know for sure that you really are that fucking low! Christ, I thought Trevale was a piece of dirt, but you, Michaela - you take the biscuit.’
Mickey pouted. ‘Well, when you put it like that, of course it sounds bad. But you’re not looking at it from my point of view, are you? I’ve worked my butt off in that club for Cathy, night after night. She ain’t given it to me for nothing, has she? I mean, it’s in her interest to treat us well, isn’t it? She is a nice woman, granted, but at the end of the day she’s still my employer - it’s not like it’s family, is it? She’s rolling in it, fucking stinking rich. Why shouldn’t I have a bit of what she’s got, eh?’
‘You really think you can justify what you’ve done, don’t you?’ Eddie’s voice was high with disbelief. ‘Look - I asked you to help me set up my brother.
That
was personal. Then you go behind my back and work out a completely new deal with him. Then’ - he laughed - ‘this is the bit I really like, you think you can come here and make even more money by using me to blackmail the woman who has been good to you, and who incidentally has never done a fucking thing to me. Is that right? Am I reading all this correctly?’